The just released Defence White Paper on New Zealand's strategic and security interests to 2025, as Gordon Campbell points out, is long on rhetoric, and short on coherence and detail. But worse still it fails to even mention a very serious and imminent threat to our security which both the US and German military have warned about - namely the peaking of global oil production leading to dwindling world oil supplies. » Read more

There was much hype and hoopla at the recent New Zealand Petroleum Conference about the extent of New Zealand's potential oil and gas reserves. Chris Uruski, a GNS scientist told Chris Laidlaw on Radio NZ's Sunday that we potentially have 20 billion barrels of oil equivalent in New Zealand's offshore exclusive economic zone. » Read more

The UK's Energy Secretary Chris Huhne has ordered his officials to look at the impact of a 1970s-style oil price spike on the British economy. Mr Huhne warned that a 1970s-style doubling in the price of oil would drain £45billion from the UK economy in two years, hitting investment and jobs.

Meanwhile our Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee and the NZ government are deep in denial about peak oil and resulting higher oil prices.